Ten Things XP Teams Say

Communication relies on context as well as message; without this shared understanding, customers and programmers will miscommunicate. In this article, William C. Wake lists 10 common statements and tells us what they really mean.

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Introduction

XP teams have their own way of doing certain things. Part of this reality is
that there are certain things you'll hear an XP team say that have special
meaning.

One way to look at what people say is to consider whether the statements are
true or false. But there's another approach to evaluating speech known as
speech act theory, with roots in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. (See
Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores' Understanding Computers and
Cognition [Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-11297-3], for an
introduction.)

Speech act theory views statements as moves in a language game. Some moves
are requests for action, others are statements of fact, and still others are
declarations. Declarations are an interesting case; they're statements
where the act of making the statement makes it true. For example, a minister
saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife" makes it true by the
statement.

In XP (or any team), there are speeches that represent important events. This
article looks at some statements that people make, considering exactly what they
mean. They don't necessarily logically imply their full meaning, because
they rely on a team's shared understanding.